LANSING, MI – The Senator representing people whose water has been contaminated by chemicals from a Wolverine dump site has asked Senate leadership to push pause on a bill that would stop the state from enacting regulations stricter than federal ones.
The bill in question, House Bill 4205, would prohibit a state agency from adopting rules stricter than federally mandated standards in most cases.
"We’re going to hold off on that just because I don’t want people to think that 4205 was because of what was happening in Belmont or not," said Sen. Peter MacGregor, R-Rockford.
Area residents complain of cancer and thyroid problems. Whole-house filters are on their way, but some residents and students at a Rockford middle school are drinking bottled water.
This week, residents came to Lansing to express concerns about how House Bill 4205 could affect a situation like theirs.
"No one deserves to live with contaminated water because a new law says we can’t do more than the absolute minimum to protect drinking water," said area resident Ann Geers at a press conference Tuesday.
Snyder earlier in his tenure vetoed a bill similar to House Bill 4205.
The bill has passed the House and made it through the Senate Oversight Committee MacGregor heads.
Ananich wants to meet with MacGregor and other senators whose districts are struggling with water issues to look at a way to address them statewide, and not as one-off, local issues.

Water firm United Utilities has been fined £300,000 for contaminating supplies to more than 700,000 people.
Hundreds of thousands of residents in Lancashire had to boil their water in summer 2015 when microbial parasite cryptosporidium was found in the Franklaw water treatment works in Preston.
United Utilities Water Ltd spent £25 million as a result of the contamination, including £18.3 million in voluntary compensation payments to households and businesses, Preston Crown Court heard.
Concerned families panicked bough bottles of water from local supermarkets stripping their shelves bare.
However, it’s likely that in the minds of many customers there would have been ongoing concerns because confidence had been affected.’
‘I know from first-hand the inconvenience this incident caused, having lived in Lancashire for 40 years.
Richard Banwell, prosecuting for the Drinking Water Inspectorate, said temporary operational changes at the Franklaw plant led to contaminated water from an underground reservoir going back into the water treatment facility from July 27 to July 31 2015.
The warning for customers to boil their water was issued the next day and stayed in place until early September.
The court heard there was a ‘huge’ impact on the public.
He added: ‘No doubt the need to boil water was of significant inconvenience to everybody.’

Colorado health officials should take the contamination crisis in El Paso County into their own hands and set a limit for the allowable concentration of unhealthy chemicals found in drinking water.
PFCs are used in a number of consumer products and have been linked by scientists to problems like low birth weights, and kidney and testicular cancers. The chemicals are thought to endanger pregnant women, infants and children the most.
The results make it difficult to track the plume’s progress toward other communities, including Pueblo.
Also, Finley reported this summer that researchers from the Colorado School of Mines found that carbon filters, like those being used by one of the public water systems in the contaminated area, fail to fully remove all the harmful chemicals.
Much more is needed to be done on this issue and the state should step in to fill the gap and compel more action from the EPA and DOD.
Finley reported last week that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is considering setting a legal limit for the maximum amount of PFCs.
Finley reported the Colorado School of Mines detected PFCs at 11,000 parts per trillion and 33,000 parts per trillion in an undisclosed water supply near the base.

Scheduled to meet for the first time Oct. 2, the council will address a range of emerging water quality issues.
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sept. 22 announced his eight appointees to the 12-member Drinking Water Quality Council that will guide New York’s actions to ensure all communities across the state have access to clean drinking water. Scheduled to meet for the first time Oct. 2, the council will address a range of emerging water quality issues and solicit outside industry experts, as well. Its first task will be to make recommendations to establish enforceable Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for three priority emerging contaminants, which are not regulated by the federal government, that have been found in New York: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), and 1,4-dioxane.
A second meeting of the council will happen later this year.
"Using the best available science and tapping an array of experts, this new council will provide science-based recommendations for the development of regulations to assure that good-quality drinking water remains available to all New Yorkers. Water quality is a national issue that requires consistent national standards, but New York can no longer afford to wait."

ISLAMABAD: The microbial contamination of drinking water in Islamabad has intensified due to lack of proper disposal of municipal waste, posing serious health hazards to the residents of the capital.
The report compiled by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) –a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune — reveals that 68% water sources were found unfit for drinking purpose in Islamabad and 62% in Rawalpindi. Water quality of Rawalpindi city has been found better and improved then of Islamabad.
A total of 25 predetermined locations were monitored for the drinking water quality of Islamabad, out of them 17 sources were found unfit for drinking purpose.
The major contaminant found in the drinking water was bacteria, as 68% of the water samples were found contaminated with Coliforms. However the surface run-off, increased concentrations of nutrients and municipal waste are major contributing sources for higher bacterial contamination in drinking water, according to the report.
He said that around 37 filtration plants are installed at different locations in the capital meanwhile water purification plant is installed at Simly Dam in order to provide clean drinking water to the people of Islamabad.
The report further shows a significant improvement in the water quality of Rawalpindi city since 2002 as safe water sources has increased from 27% in 2002 to 43% in 2016.

Uncertainty lingers in West Michigan following an informational town hall meeting about contaminated well water.
State and county health official know the toxic chemicals discovered in Belmont and Plainfield Township are often used in leather goods.
David O’Donnell is with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
“Then we can take the next step, which is what do we do with this, how do we provide people a permanent safe source of drinking water?” O’Donnell said.
Wolverine Worldwide is a shoe company that is believed to be the cause of the chemical leak.
Christopher Hufnagel, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Wolverine Worldwide, says the company is being proactive about the water issue.
“We’re committed to making sure residents are confident about the quality of their drinking water,” Hufnagel said.
Some residents are concerned about health issues connected to the water contamination.
It could take years of testing to find these things out," Busch said.
He says the county should be more transparent in its findings.

It’s unclear, however, how much contaminated water was consumed, whether public health officials correlated any health problems to the tainted water or whether people will have health problems down the road.
Health officials, from the federal level down to local authorities, also face budget constraints that can limit how they investigate, monitor, report and treat water contamination.
A News21 analysis of EPA data shows 63 million people were served by water systems that violated federal standards two or more times, sometimes for lead, copper, arsenic and cancer-causing poisons.
In 2016, when the EPA recognized the chemicals’ dangers and lowered acceptable PFOS levels by 65 percent, the city closed and later replaced the wells that were contaminating the water supply to all customers.
Researchers have linked the chemical to some cancers, high cholesterol and fetal development complications.
In another case, Indian River County Utilities, with about 109,286 customers, reported E. coli in the water in August 2015, according to the EPA and DEP.
There is no acceptable level for E. coli contamination.
But some of the contaminants show up in the water because people put them there.
That means state health officials don’t test or report on many contaminants that sicken people across the U.S. “I think health organizations declaring water as safe to drink is a bit reckless,” said Bowcock, the water treatment expert.
"It would be far easier and far less costly … if you put the burden on the sources of the chemicals — chemical agriculture and industrial chemical sources — that discharge their chemicals into water sources," Walker said.

BELMONT, Mich. — Residents in parts of Belmont could be without clean drinking water for as long as two years while DEQ officials investigate the presence of a little known but potentially dangerous contaminant that made its way into people’s wells.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to as PFAS, are a large group of man-made chemicals that have been in use since the 1950s.
Before the EPA tightened dumping regulations in the 1970s, Wolverine World Wide, a West Michigan-based shoe manufacturer used PFAS in materials used to waterproof their shoes.
Of the 21 homes already tested for PFAS in the Belmont area, 13 were found to have shown the presence of the chemicals and 7 homes showed results above the EPA lifetime recommended level of 70-parts-per-trillion, some exhibiting as much as 65-times that level.
They issued FOX17 the following statement: "For more than a century, Wolverine Worldwide has been committed to the communities in which its employees live and work, especially the Rockford and Greater Grand Rapids area.
Consistent with this commitment, Wolverine is currently working closely with state and local officials to collect data from our former tannery in Rockford and the House Street area to better understand the possible presence of PFOA and PFOS at these two sites.
Immediately after Wolverine first learned that PFOS may have been present in the 3M Scotchgard® applied to leather at its former tannery site in Rockford, the Company developed and submitted to the Department of Environmental Quality a proposed plan to voluntarily sample this site for not only PFOS, but also for PFOA and other PFAS compounds.
Earlier this summer, Wolverine learned that PFOA and PFOS were detected in water from a well in the House Street area, near property owned by Wolverine.
This property, which Wolverine formerly operated as a disposal area licensed and regulated by the State, has not been determined to be a source of either PFOA or PFOS, but given our longstanding commitment to this community Wolverine has been working with the DEQ and Kent County Health Department over the past several weeks to test samples from the area.
Consistent with its long history in the community, Wolverine is committed to working with all appropriate agencies in their efforts to determine the status of these sites, and to keep the community informed along the way."

Soil Pollution: The Cause and Effect of Contaminants in our Earth.
Plastic waste and chemicals contaminate our waters.
Soil Pollution First off, what is soil pollution?
Soil pollution differs slightly from land pollution because while they are affected in some of the same ways by the same contaminates, soil pollution focuses solely on the soil.
Of course it is not just the chemical contaminants in the pesticides that is causing soil pollution, nitrogen rich fertilizers, and untreated manure also have adverse effects on the soil.
Impacts of Soil Pollution on the Environment Soil pollution can be a contributing factor to other forms of pollution like air and water.
Effects of Soil Pollution Pollution of the Earth’s soil can have many harmful effects on ecosystems and the health of humans, plants and animals.
Effects of Soil Pollution on Humans Many common soil pollutants are also carcinogenic to humans.
Even though lead and mercury can be found naturally in the ground, human activity can lead to dangerous concentrations of the heavy metals which can lead to neurological problems in children and adults.
Effects of Soil Pollution on Plant Life With the already harmful effects of heavy metals on human health, they also have a very harmful effect on the soil itself.

IDEM said that despite the ground water contamination, the finished water is safe for consumption.
Drinking water in the area currently shows no trace of the chemicals that had been discovered in the ground water.
According to IDEM, Contamination Site 0153 was first reported in 2013.
The organization “has begun investigation into the sources of the contamination and … [will be] implementing a cleanup and monitoring plan.” When that testing was first performed, it was believed that the contaminants posed a major threat to the area’s drinking water.
According to a memo from IDEM to the EPA, it was then placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List.
The EPA classifies these “superfund sites” as sites that warrant further investigations after “known or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.” However, the memo reveals that the earlier test was “only a snapshot in time.” In April of 2016, further information from Citizens Water was provided to IDEM.
The cleanup will take several years, but the monitoring will last much longer.
At an Aug. 17 public meeting, lead project manager Ryan Groves announced that the investigation alone will take two to three years, while the cleanup process could last two to five years.
The cleanup process would not begin until after the conclusion of the investigation, meaning from start to finish, the project could last between four to eight years.
Site 0153’s contamination has brought together several groups, including Northwest Quality of Life, Flanner House, and the newly formed Indiana Environmental Justice Assembly (IEJA), supported by the Kheprw Institute, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit involved in diverse aspects of community development.